Every year, the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts brings Tampa Bay a tasty cornucopia of art, from wood to fiber to painting. This year, the GFA chose the head of curatorial affairs for the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio as juror. He alone will decide which talented artists go home with more than $75,000 in prize money. With so many different types of art on display, how does he choose? We get a peek inside his process.
You’re the sole juror for the event. What’s your process for selecting the best of the best?
First, I like to get an overview of the quality and range of the work under consideration — usually a sampling will suffice. Then I begin a more thorough process of looking at everything in a systematic way. As I go, I note what I feel might make the cut, so to speak, with the idea of a short list of finalists in mind. That list may include about 10. I’ll mull over the short list for a bit. But, from past experience, I’ll tend to gravitate to something and stick with it. Sometimes that pull will come early in the process, and sticks to the very end.
What type of art do you collect in your own home?
My husband and I have eclectic tastes, ranging from abstract painting to collage to photography to folk art. Many of the things in our collection have personal meaning — perhaps made by an artist with whom I worked, or a friend. Some works have very specific stories that go along with them, others are purely guilty pleasures, acquired more spontaneously. The art we collect reflects both our individual taste and our combined sensibility. It’s not about collecting “names,” or a specific type of work — the collection itself is similar to a large-scale collage.
What surprised you the most about this year’s art?
So far, I’ve only seen this year’s art in reproduction. My general impression is that I can expect to see very high-quality work when I’m at the Festival, in person — work that demonstrates not only skill, but also reveals much about the artists themselves and the care and focus that they bring to the work.
What’s your favorite part of GFA — and why?
Among my favorite parts of serving as juror is to meet artists in person. I often describe my approach to curatorial work as to begin equally interested in the artists as I am in the art. Another favorite part is discovering the work of artists unfamiliar to me.
What’s the biggest challenge in jurying an event like this?
For me, the biggest challenge is to remain as objective as possible and not let my own personal taste and interest cloud the process. However, especially in cases where there is a sole juror as here, subjectivity manages to creep in. In some ways, it’s similar to collecting art, especially for collectors who have a strict focus. No matter how much they try to use objective criteria to build the collection, subjective forces come into play.
What about GFA makes it different from other art festivals?
Since this year is my first time to experience the Festival in person, I have limited knowledge on which to base this response. From what I’ve seen via the website, my initial response is that GFA has much to offer individual artists in terms of prize money compared to other festivals that I am aware of.
We know you have a deep appreciation for Andy Warhol. If pressed, who would you say is making art today who could have the same reach as Warhol did?
Warhol’s reach was not fully appreciated during his lifetime; however, we continue to see the effect he has on every generation of artists since his death. Because Warhol died just before the explosion of digital media and the internet, I think is unfair to compare today’s artists’ ability to reach global audiences with that of Warhol during his own lifetime. That said, if pressed, I’d say that Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Ai Weiwei, Damien Hirst, and Takashi Murakami are among those artists whose reach parallels that of Andy Warhol.
Cathy Salustri is the arts + entertainment editor for Creative Loafing Tampa. Contact her here.
This article appears in Mar 1-8, 2018.
